Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change.

EDITOR'S NOTE

This week, as the government shutdown continues, Rev. Danny Fisher reflects on dharma teachings that come to mind at this political moment, including the words of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi:

One has no right to hope without endeavor, so…work to try and bring about the situation that is necessary.

The New York Times highlights Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black who has taken to offering prayers for the conscience of the legislators.

Sharon Salzberg remembers S.N. Goenka, her first meditation teacher, who so profoundly influenced her, as he did millions, in light of his death on September 29.

He posited a world where we grow closer to one another through our shared vulnerability to change and loss. He so much embodied the ancient teachings of the Buddha, yet insisted on a completely inclusive, secular, contemporary approach.

Bernie Glassman Roshi reflects on the life of Issan Dorsey, the radical acceptance he embodied.

And Tara Brach invites us to offer a small gesture of kindness to ourselves when we find our negative moods or emotions underlied by a sense of our unworthiness:

You might for instance put your hand on your heart—letting the touch be tender—and send a message inwardly. It might be “It’s okay, sweetheart.” Or “I care about this suffering.” Or, “I’m sorry and I love you.” Often, it’s simply, “This, too.”

Áine McCarthy, Editor

THIS MONTH AT UPAYA

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Dharma Talk, Daily Practice

DHARMA TALK — Wednesday, October 9, 5:30 pm

Tias Little, Why Savasana is the Most Important Pose

DAILY PRACTICE

7:00 am, 12:20 pm, and 5:30 pm. Please arrive five minutes early for sitting periods and events. Park in the East parking lot (Second driveway — the one farther from town.) Please note: There will be no 12:20 zazen on October 12.

ROSHI JOAN: News, Teachings, Travels

Roshi will be in Asia two months: in Nepal, India and Japan: Nomads Clinic and Pilgrimage to Manaslu; Dharamsala and co-moderating the Mind and Life meeting at the Dalai Lama's residence; Japan art journey with Kaz Tanahashi and Mayumi Oda. She returns to Upaya on Nov. 16.

All is very vibrant at Upaya at this time, and there is a lot of gratitude for our local sangha and residents who keep the practice stream flowing. Special thanks to our Associate to the Abbot Joshin, and Resident Coordinator Genzan. Great thanks to Jiryu, Shinzan, and Rinzan, and a fine group of residents, and Upaya's longterm staff Ellen, Maia, Natalie, Roberta, Áine, and Sue.

We are accepting applications for Upaya's resident program. Please consider joining Roshi, Visiting Teachers, and Upaya for three months or more of dedicated practice and learning. By application, click here.

Roshi as well has a number of papers she has written on compassion. If you wish to receive a copy, please write the office: upaya@upaya.org

For several new videos of interviews with Roshi Joan on Upaya's Blog, click here.

Roshi Joan started a Google+ Community and more than 1500 people have joined so far. Click here to join.

Upaya is guided by a series of remarkable Visiting Teachers. We are grateful for Sensei Robert Thomas (Nov 2013), Sensei Irene Bakker (Jul/Aug 2013), Roshi Eido Frances Carney (Sep 2013). Also, we are happy that Sensei Alan Senauke is now a Core Teacher for our Chaplaincy Training and will be a Visiting Teacher in spring, 2014. Note that Roshi Norman Fischer will be leading Upaya's Summer Ango in 2014 and Sensei Robert Thomas will be leading spring sesshin, 2014 and will be a Visiting Teacher in fall 2014.

Roshi now has five new books available for sale at Upaya: Four are photography books — "Seeing Inside," "About Face," "Original Face: Unmediated Expressions of Tibet, Nepal, Burma," and "Leaning into the Light." "Lone Mallard" is a book of her haiku. In addition, over a hundred of her remarkable photos are available to look at (and purchase) on Upaya's website:https://www.upaya.org/seeing-inside/

S.N. Goenka, who died September 29, was my very first meditation teacher. I went to India in 1970, when only 18, specifically to study meditation. Goenka-ji had been living in Burma, raising a family and building a successful business, and for many years also deepening his meditation practice. Shortly before I arrived in India, he himself arrived in India in order to visit his mother, who had been ill. Our paths converged in Bodhgaya, the town that surrounds the tree the Buddha is said to have been sitting under when he became enlightened.

Reflections on Issan Dorsey: Roshi Bernie Glassman

In my experience, many people come to Zen practice because they love the stories of Zen masters of long ago. They love reading about outrageous teachers who said strange things and acted in even stranger ways, seeming like children, fools, and even madmen to the rest of society.

It has also been my experience that while we love these characters that lived hundreds of years ago, we don’t love them so much while they’re still living. We don’t always love our present day madmen and eccentrics, for these are the people who manifest our shadow. They live in the cracks – nor just of our society but of our psyche. They put in our faces those qualities in ourselves that we’d prefer not to see – a refusal to conform, a refusal to “grow up,” a human being who ignores conventions and acceptable standards of behavior and makes up his life as he goes along.

I think of Issan Dorsey as the shadow in many people’s lives. He was a drug addict, he was gay, he appeared in drag, and he died of AIDS. For many years he lived right on the edge, befriending junkies, drag queens and alkies who lived precariously like him, on the fringes of society. When he died, a Zen teacher and priest, he was still befriending and caring for those whom our society rejected then and continues to reject now, people ill with the AIDS virus.

Like the old Zen masters of old, Issan Dorsey was outrageous; he manifested the shadow in our lives. And he was loved not just after his death but also during his life. For Issan had exuberance for all of life, and that included death, too.

I first met Issan Dorsey in 1980, just after he began the Maitri group on Hartford Street. I happened to be visiting San Francisco Zen Center and was in the zendo when Roshi Richard Baker, Abbot of the Center, announced that a satellite group of gay Zen practitioners was forming in the middle of San Francisco’s Castro District, under the leadership of Issan Dorsey. Baker Roshi strongly supported Issan’s work, as he would continue to do for years to come. That was my first meeting with Issan. By then I had formed the Zen Community of New York with a vision of manifesting our practice in the area of social action, providing housing and jobs to our disadvantaged neighbors. This was highly unusual for Zen centers in those days, so I was curious about how Issan’s mission would turn out.

During the following years Issan and I often talked on the telephone, he from San Francisco, I from Yonkers, New York. We’d exchange news about what we were doing, and one day he told me that he’d taken into the Hartford Street Zen Center a man dying of AIDS.

That took place in 1987. This may not seem so unusual now, 11 years later, for some Buddhist groups have begun to take an interest in their communities, taking care of the disadvantaged, the sick and the dying. After all, didn’t the Buddha himself begin his search for enlightenment after coming across illness and death outside the walls of his palace? But back in 1987, Issan’s behavior was seen as outrageous. Most people thought that the proper practice of Zen Buddhism was coming to a zendo and sitting on a cushion, nothing more. There was lots of talk about putting practice in our daily life and about the role of the bodhisattva who vows to save all sentient beings. But many believed that the role of the bodhisattva didn’t begin till after enlightenment. Thus, the practice of providing dying people with shelter, food, medical care and a warm and loving environment was not seen as a proper Zen Buddhist practice. In founding the Greyston mandala of organizations that helped the Yonkers community, I was constantly told that I was doing the wrong thing, and that both as a teacher and as a priest I was not transmitting the teachings in their pure form.

Issan, too, received plenty of flak for the work he was doing. But he didn’t let it stop him. So J.D. came into the Hartford Street Zen Center, having been told by his doctors that he had, at most, three months to live. Six months later I visited Issan and J.D. at Hartford Street. J.D. was still living and in excellent spirits. He didn’t die till more than a year later, and by then Issan had opened Maitri Hospice for more men infected with the AIDS virus.

During that visit I spent a lot of time with Issan, and fell in love with him. He was always “right there,” very present to the people around him, full of humor in what some may call a macabre situation. In fact, I often think of Issan as a combination of Lenny Bruce and the Dalai Lama. He had the ability to laugh through any situation, no matter how difficult or painful, greeting the grim corners of life with lightheartedness and even joy.

I remember when he called to tell me that he had just discovered that he was HIV positive. There was absolutely no sadness or fear in his voice. His tone was almost nonchalant as he talked about how he had loved his friend knowing full well that he was HIV positive, how they had made love, how he got tested and found that he was HIV positive, too, and now had to work with it. The conversation was that simple.

I was reminded of Fr. Damien, who had taken care of the lepers on Molokai Island in Hawaii during the second half of the 19th century. Leprosy is not easy to contract if you take regular precautions, but Fr. Damien had not taken those precautions. He ate from the same dishes as the lepers, he didn’t wash his hands, and finally he contracted leprosy and died.

I don’t wish to say that Issan didn’t appreciate the gravity of AIDS and didn’t take the necessary precautions. But I know how sensitive Issan was to the epidemic ravaging the gay population at the time, and in particular his friends in the Castro District, and I can’t help having the feeling that, like Fr. Damien before him, Issan wished to live and die through his friends’ pain. He wished to bear witness to everything they endured: their strong individuality, their exuberant life styles, their joie de vivre, and their illness and death.

Like Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Issan Dorsey bore witness to the joys and pains of the universe. People loved him because of his great delight in life, his way of evoking all the happy reasons we have for living. They loved him even more when he bore witness to our deep pain and sorrow. He didn’t just talk about it, he lived it, and brought J. D. Kobezak, who had AIDS, into the zendo.

There’s a famous Zen Buddhist chant honoring Kanzeon, who is none other than Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Once, in a telephone conversation with Issan, I told him that I had just completed a translation of the chant. Full of excitement, he asked me to send it to him as soon as possible since he wished to talk about that chant in a coming retreat. I did so. The chant celebrates Kanzeon, who hears all the sounds of the universe and bears witness to each and every one of us. The impact of such a bodhisattva surpasses our understanding. He influences people directly, as the direct cause of their transformation, and also indirectly, as part of the environment, the gestalt, that accompanies them on their path. Karma is the total of these direct and indirect causes. And this karma continues long after a teacher’s death. In fact, it is often said that a teacher’s greatest teaching occurs upon and after his/her death.

In 1997, ten years after Issan died, as part of the Greyston Network in Yonkers, we opened an AIDS Center. We called the Adult Day Health Program Maitri Center, after Issan’s Maitri Hospice. We called the housing complex of 35 apartments for people with HIV/AIDS Issan House, after Issan Dorsey. Several months later I was walking through the center when a man I didn’t know approached me. He was from the local community and he had AIDS. He was not a Buddhist. He thanked me for our work in building the AIDS center, and then he told me how much he wished that he’d known Issan Dorsey.

Five Buddhist Lessons in Light of the U.S. Government Shutdown: Rev. Danny Fisher

As everyone should know by now, the U.S. government officially shut down earlier this week. House Republicans are refusing to submit a spending bill that does not include provisions to delay and/or cripple the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590). Since the passage into law of what they derisively call “Obamacare,” the GOP has been collectively engaged in the throes of an increasingly overbearing and consistently unsuccessful tantrum; they have tried and failed to repeal it a whopping 41 times, despite not only the law’s establishment, but also a Supreme Court ruling on its constitutionality and the public’s tacit endorsement in the President’s reelection. With nothing left to do within the confines of democracy, except “take hostages” (in the words of Sen. Elizabeth Warren), the House Republicans have now caused the shutdown.

A shutdown has various awful consequences for the country, not the least of which is the furlough of thousands of government employees. In addition, at an economically fragile moment for the country, it is costing us about $300 million a day. Though there are quite a few insults to add to the shutdown’s many injuries as well, here’s one especially egregious example: it prevents children with cancer from participating in potentially helpful clinical trials.

Watching this situation unfold has caused me to reflect on a few teachings from Buddhist leaders, and it seems a worthwhile thing to share them here, along with some reflections…

Ajahn Chah once said that “Dhamma is that which can cut through the problems and difficulties of mankind, gradually reducing them to nothing…that’s what should be studied throughout our daily lives so that when some mental impression arises in us, we’ll be able to deal with it and go beyond it.” This is a pithy articulation of an essential Buddhist message, but we must also recognize that there is suffering that comes from structural and institutional violence. One may have a mental impression about being homeless or hungry, but they will need more than just practice, right? They will need a roof over their head, or food in their belly. Addressing suffering must include looking at such truths, and also the root causes of these social realities.

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi said the above quote in a wonderful interview with my friend Joshua Eaton for Religion Dispatches, and elaborated by saying:

Classical Buddhism regards these “defilements” as embedded in individual minds and thus primarily deals with the problem of personal suffering: the suffering that arises when one acts in their grip. But in the modern world, social systems and institutions molded by greed, hatred, and delusion have become so pervasive in their reach that they deeply impact the destinies of whole populations, both nationally and globally. For this reason, a solution to the problem of suffering requires that its roots be extricated at multiple levels, including those collective levels touched only distantly by classical Buddhism. This would entail developing a keen diagnosis of how these defilements produce collective suffering, and how we can adopt alternative ways of living that would mitigate their harmful impact.

Indeed, it is imperative that contemporary Buddhist leaders fully grapple with not only the individual, but also the systemic roots of so much suffering in our world, including those in the realms of U.S. healthcare and politics. And out of that grappling should come some new kind of vision and action. At any rate…

There’s a story in the Vinaya about a monk suffering alone from dysentery — none of his fellow monastics are helping him. The Buddha comes to him and begins to take care of him and clean him with Ananda’s help. As the other monks look on, the Buddha admonishes them, saying, “You would all want to take care of me if I were in such a state. Whoever would take care of me should take care of anyone who is sick.”

My friend, the great Buddhist scholar and UWest’s former president Lewis Lancaster, says that the one thing all Buddhist traditions have in common is an emphasis on compassion. He says: "Buddhists, when they talk about compassion, say that if you are enlightened, you will have a deeper response to suffering. If insights do not lead to compassion, then it is not what the Buddha experienced at his enlightenment."

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act may or may not be the best solution to our national health care problems — in fact, it’s probably somewhere in the middle, improving some things while not even addressing other problems — but at least it is an attempt to relieve a good deal of suffering. Among other things, it will:

prevent people with preexisting medical conditions from being denied coverage;

prevent insurers from charging women more than men for the same coverage;

allow people under the age of 26 to be covered by their parents’ plans;

require all plans to include free preventative care;

and cover 25 million currently-uninsured persons by 2020.

Until two weeks ago, when they unveiled a half-baked plan only after being called out by the President for not offering any alternatives in the three years since the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, the House Republicans had nothing to propose — they were simply naysaying, for reasons of partisanship and ”capitulation to the medical device industry and its lobbyists” (in the words of the New York Times' editorial board).

We should absolutely aspire to much better — universal coverage, a single-payer option, and so on — but doing nothing while people are suffering, or worse, undermining efforts to help as many as currently possible for no good reason and without just cause, is unacceptable. We should make that clear in both word and deed.

As comforting as it is to see that some in the mainstream media have recognized that the blame should be placed squarely on the shoulders of the House Republicans here, I’m not sure how helpful headlines like [a recent] one from the New York Daily News really are. We also need to aspire to change hearts and minds, and not demonize others (as frustrating as they can be) because of where they are now. Everyone has Buddhanature, hard as it may sometimes be to see, and that should not be forgotten as we work to relieve suffering.

Let’s be very clear: it is not compassionate to tolerate outright stupidity and/or abuse. And it’s certainly neither compassionate nor intelligent to promote a false equivalency when it comes to the positions on each side of this situation, as so many others in the mainstream media have done. (Jason Jones spoofed this notion brilliantly in his most recent Daily Show segment, especially at 1:30.)

Trungpa Rinpoche elaborates:

In order that your compassion doesn’t become idiot compassion, you have to use your intelligence. Otherwise, there could be self-indulgence of thinking that you are creating a compassionate situation when in fact you are feeding the other person’s aggression. If you go to a shop and the shopkeeper cheats you and you go back and let him cheat you again, that doesn’t seem to be a very healthy thing to do for others.

It is definitely not true that there are two equal sides to every issue, and that’s clearly the case here. And, as Jimmy Kimmel showed us this week, reflecting others’ wrongness back to them can actually be a productive and even compassionate act.

Make sure you do things. Anything you can. We can’t just pray and meditate. We can’t just complain and share/repost Daily Show segments, or this post, or even an eloquent, fantastic talk about the shutdown by the great Robert Thurman. We each have to do our own individual part to ensure that the right things happen. At the very least, sign petitions or participate in phone campaigns... or go to demonstrations or write your own blog posts or record your own YouTube videos. Anything you can. You are needed — each and every one of you — to make sure that the situation that is necessary comes to pass.

WASHINGTON — The disapproval comes from angry constituents, baffled party elders and colleagues on the other side of the Capitol. But nowhere have senators found criticism more personal or immediate than right inside their own chamber every morning when the chaplain delivers the opening prayer.

“Save us from the madness,” the chaplain, a Seventh-day Adventist, former Navy rear admiral and collector of brightly colored bow ties named Barry C. Black, said one day late last week as he warmed up into what became an epic ministerial scolding.

“We acknowledge our transgressions, our shortcomings, our smugness, our selfishness and our pride,” he went on, his baritone voice filling the room. “Deliver us from the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable.”

So it has gone every day for the last week when Mr. Black, who has been the Senate’s official man of the cloth for 10 years, has taken one of the more rote rituals on Capitol Hill — the morning invocation — and turned it into a daily conscience check for the 100 men and women of the United States Senate.

Inside the tempestuous Senate chamber, where debate has degenerated into daily name-calling — the Tea Party as a band of nihilists and extortionists, and Democrats as socialists who want to force their will on the American people — Mr. Black’s words manage to cut through as powerful and persuasive.

During his prayer on Friday, the day after officers from the United States Capitol Police shot and killed a woman who had used her car as a battering ram, Mr. Black noted that the officers were not being paid because of the government shutdown.

Then he turned his attention back to the senators. “Remove from them that stubborn pride which imagines itself to be above and beyond criticism,” he said. “Forgive them the blunders they have committed.”

Senator Harry Reid, the pugnacious majority leader who has called his Republican adversaries anarchists, rumps and hostage takers, took note. As Mr. Black spoke, Mr. Reid, whose head was bowed low in prayer, broke his concentration and looked straight up at the chaplain.

“Following the suggestion in the prayer of Admiral Black,” the majority leader said after the invocation, seeming genuinely contrite, “I think we’ve all here in the Senate kind of lost the aura of Robert Byrd,” one of the historical giants of the Senate, who prized gentility and compromise.

In many ways, Mr. Black, 65, is like any other employee of the federal government who is fed up with lawmakers’ inability to resolve the political crisis that has kept the government closed for almost a week. He is not being paid. His Bible study classes, which he holds for senators and their staff members four times a week, have been canceled until further notice.

His is a nonpartisan position, one of just a few in the Senate, and he prefers to leave his political leanings vague. He was chosen in 2003 by Senator Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican who was the majority leader at the time, from a group of finalists selected by a bipartisan committee. Before that he ministered in the Navy for nearly 30 years.

“I use a biblical perspective to decide my beliefs about various issues,” Mr. Black said in an interview in his office suite on the third floor of the Capitol. “Let’s just say I’m liberal on some and conservative on others. But it’s obvious the Bible condemns some things in a very forceful and overt way, and I would go along with that condemnation.”

Last year, he participated in the Hoodies on the Hill rally to draw attention to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. In 2007, after objections from groups that did not like the idea of a Senate chaplain appearing alongside political figures, he canceled a speech he was scheduled to give at an evangelical event featuring, among others, Tony Perkins of the conservative Focus on the Family and the columnist and author Ann Coulter.

Mr. Black, who is the first black Senate chaplain as well as its first Seventh-day Adventist, grew up in public housing in Baltimore, an experience he draws on in his sermons and writings, including a 2006 autobiography, “From the Hood to the Hill.”

In his role as chaplain, a position that has existed since 1789, he acts as a sounding board, spiritual adviser and ethical counselor to members of the Senate. When he prays each day, he said, he recites the names of all 100 senators and their spouses, reading them from a laminated index card.

It is not uncommon for him to have 125 people at his Bible study gatherings or 20 to 30 senators at his weekly prayer breakfast. He officiates weddings for Senate staff members. He performs hospital visitations. And he has been at the side of senators when they have died, most recently Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii in December.

He tries to use his proximity to the senators — and the fact that for at least one minute every morning, his is the only voice they hear — to break through on issues that he feels are especially urgent. Lately, he said, they seem to be paying attention.

“I remember once talking about self-inflicted wounds — that captured the imagination of some of our lawmakers,” he said. “Remember, my prayer is the first thing they hear every day. I have the opportunity, really, to frame the day in a special way.”

His words lately may be pointed, but his tone is always steady and calm.

“May they remember that all that is necessary for unintended catastrophic consequences is for good people to do nothing,” he said the day of the shutdown deadline.

“Unless you empower our lawmakers,” he prayed another day, “they can comprehend their duty but not perform it.”

The House, which has its own chaplain, liked what it heard from Mr. Black so much that it invited him to give the invocation on Friday.

“I see us playing a very dangerous game,” Mr. Black said as he sat in his office the other day. “It’s like the showdown at the O.K. Corral. Who’s going to blink first? So I can’t help but have some of this spill over into my prayer. Because you’re hoping that something will get through and that cooler heads will prevail.” A version of this article appears in print on October 7, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Give Us This Day, Our Daily Senate Scolding.

Image: "The Senate’s chaplain, Barry C. Black, in his office on Capitol Hill;" photo by Drew Angerer for The New York Times.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/us/politics/senate-chaplain-shows-his-disapproval-during-morning-prayer.html?hp&_r=0 Accessed 7 Oct. 2013. A version of this article also appears in print on October 7, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Give Us This Day, Our Daily Senate Scolding. )

A Gesture of Kindness: Tara Brach

The next time you find yourself in a bad mood, take a moment to pause and ask yourself, “What is my attitude toward myself right now? Am I relating to myself with judgment … or with mindfulness, warmth, and respect?”

Typically, you’ll find that when you’re anxious, lonely, or depressed, you’re also down on yourself in some way, and that undercurrent of feeling deficient or unworthy is what’s keeping you cut off from your own aliveness, as well as your feeling of connection with others.

The way of healing and homecoming begins with what I call “a gesture of kindness.” You might for instance put your hand on your heart—letting the touch be tender—and send a message inwardly. It might be “It’s okay, sweetheart.” Or “I care about this suffering.” Or, “I’m sorry and I love you.” Often, it’s simply, “This, too.”

Sometimes, this gesture of kindness includes saying “yes” to whatever’s going on—the yes meaning, “This is what’s happening, it’s how life is right now … it’s okay.”

If you’re really down on yourself, you can also say “Forgiven, forgiven.” Not because there’s something wrong to forgive, but because there’s some judgment to let go of.

As you offer yourself this gesture of kindness, take some moments to stay with yourself, to keep yourself company. Allow whatever most wants attention to surface, and sense that you are the loving presence that can include and embrace whatever’s arising.

Then, see if you can widen your attention, and notice what or who else is floating in your heart space. Perhaps you’ll intentionally offer a gesture of kindness to a friend who’s struggling with disappointment, a family member dealing with illness, or a teen caught in self-doubt.

As you continue to practice offering yourself and others this gesture of kindness, you will discover that this response to life becomes increasingly spontaneous and natural. In time, you’ll recognize it as the most authentic expression of who you are.

These talks, given by extraordinary Buddhist teachers such as Roshi Joan Halifax, Sharon Salzberg, Bernie Glassman, and many more, are offered to support your practice even if you live far away from Upaya.

Apps Available Now: Did you know you can have Upaya's dharma talks delivered directly to your mobile phone or MP3 player?

iPhone and iPod users, just use iTunes to subscribe to our free podcast here.

Upaya's Nepal Nomads Clinic: Compassion in the Mountains

Roshi Joan Halifax, Tenzin Norbu, and Carroll Dunham returned to Nepal Sep 23. The 2014 journey and Clinic are in a planning process. Contact Upaya if you are interested. Please support. Check out new website for stories from our medical pilgrimages (link below).__________

This month, the Nomads Clinic group is carrying hundreds of Little Sun solar lamps to the Nubri and Tsum areas, to provide light for women and girls in the deep winter months. The Little Sun Project is "an innovative way to get clean, affordable light to the 1.6 billion people worldwide without access to the electrical grid." Learn more about the global project Little Sun.

Every year (since the early eighties), Roshi Joan goes with clinicians and friends to the Himalayas with the Nomads Clinic. We invite you to join us in supporting this wonderful work. And great thanks to Chas Curtis, Cira Crowell, and Canton Becker for putting together this wonderful website!:http://nomadsclinic.org/

Santa Fe Sangha Events

THURSDAYS (most), 9:20 am: Weekly Seminar, Upaya House living room — open to the public. Topic is usually related to the dharma talk of the evening before. To confirm that the seminar is happening that morning, please email temple@upaya.org.

SATURDAY, October 19, 5:30 pm, Fusatsu: Full Moon Ceremony

SUNDAY, October 27, 3 pm, Meditation Instruction

SUNDAY, October 27, Upaya House, 6:30 pm Join Upaya's local sangha discussion group as we continue our study of the paramitas, or "practices of perfection." The paramita we are studying in October is "Enthusiastic Effort." The group meets informally from 6:30-7 pm at Upaya House with tea and cookies, with the formal program running from 7- 8:30 pm.We encourage starting by joining the residents for the 5:30 zazen practice. All are welcome as we discuss, explore and further our practice

Calgary, AB, Canada: Calgary Contemplative End of Life Care Practice Group. For professionals and volunteers working with people who are dying. Second Monday each month at Hospice Calgary's Sage Center, 6:30 – 8:30 pm. Sit starts at 7 pm. For further information, contact laurie.lemieux@hospicecalgary.com